Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, State Government Funded Racist Department

The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission was a secret state police force operating from 1956 to 1977 to suppress the civil rights movement and maintain segregation. The commission kept files, harassed and branded many as communist infiltrators via agents who were retired FBI, CIA and military intelligence. No one was safe in Mississsippi. A form of the Sovereignty Commission continues today in Mississippi. Ask Haley Barbour.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Asa Earl Carter -- the Forrest Bedford of the Native American literary world?

I was fascinated by a recent public television documentary about a man named Asa Carter who changed his name mid-life name to Forrest Bedford Carter, becoming an author of a controversial memoir, now recognized as a work for fiction, The Education of Little Tree.

Asa Carter, segregationist, aka Forrest Bedford Carter, the Native American author

Asa Earl Carter (September 4, 1925--June 7, 1979), was a devote of Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821 – October 29, 1877), a notorious and racist lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. Like the real Gen. Forrest, Carter was a rabid segregationist and an infamous racist propagandist, as well, in the 1960s. A leader of the (White) Citizens Councils (a group dedicated to opposing desegregation and one that was generally considered to be a front group for the Ku Klux Klan) of North Alabama, Carter was the head of a "klavern" of the Ku Klux Klan and was an unofficial speechwriter for segregationist Governor George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama in 1968 and candidate for the Presidency in 1972.

Since its first publication by Delacorte Press in 1976, the book was quite popular, with many people drawn to its message of traditional, simple living and love of nature. However,The Education of Little Tree was the subject of controversy after the publication of an article years later, on October 4, 1991, by Dan T. Carter (a history professor and distant cousin of Asa Carter) called "The Transformation of a Klansman" in the New York Times.

Little Tree, it turned out, was a sham -- any student of Native Americans would have known this from the start, but the book found its home with people who wanted to believe what Carter had written.

Originally accepted as an actual work by a Cherokee Indian, The Education of Little Tree ranks as one of the great literary hoaxes of American literature. Carter also published two Westerns, including The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales that actor Clint Eastwood made into the 1976 hit movie The Outlaw Josie Wells (1976). After the Eastwood film was released, the New York Times published the truth about Carter, revealing that "Forrest Carter" was actually Asa Earl Carter, the segregationist.

Since Carter was part of the Citizens Councils -- originating in 1954 in Mississippi -- and a well-known segretationist writer, I wanted to see if there were any records on him in the Sovereignty Commission. And...

Go to the Main Search Page at

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/

and plug in Asa Carter.... for two results that will lead you to three links. Be sure to put in the last name, first. Carter...Asa.

I would provide the direct links, but the state library is playing games this days, so you have to bring these up on your own.

Good luck and have fun. Susan

(Not much there, just some newspaper articles and column, but enough to bring some fascinating history to life. sk)

Related Blogs:

Civil Rights News Releases

The Emmett Till Blog

Mississippi Sovereignty Commission Links

On Wikipedia: ” The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was a state agency directed by the governor of Mississippi that existed from 1956 to 1977. The commission's stated objective was to "[...] protect the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi, and her sister states" from "federal encroachment." Initially, it was formed to coordinate activities to portray the state, and the legal racial segregation enforced by the state, in a more positive light.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_State_Sovereignty_Commission Facts About Mississippi Sovereignty Commission: Some facts about the now-defunct Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, whose files were opened to the public Tuesday. FOUNDED: Created by legislative act in 1956, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education outlawed segregated schools. MISSION: The Legislature created the commission to "protect the sovereignty of the State of Mississippi and her sister states" from federal government interference. In practice, it worked to preserve a segregated society and to oppose school integration. In secret, the commission harassed and spied on activists, branding many of them racial agitators and communist infiltrators. http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/bh/badco/missSov.htm MDAH Digital Collection: Sovereignty Commission Online http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/ The Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission by Jo Freeman (2001): “On Thursday, August 18, 1966 I entered the Bellflower Church in Grenada, Mississippi, which the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was using as its headquarters for a voter registration project. I had been a fieldworker for SCLC for over a year but in Mississippi only since June.” http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/jofreeman/sixtiesprotest/FSMMiss.htm